Record crowds this month?

[Disaddict]

So has there been a definitive answer yet as to why the parks were so crowded? I need to know whether I should switch our trip next year from mid-October to mid-September.

 

[Bolna]

I recently got back from a WDW trip as well (Oct 11-22) and would agree that sometimes it was very crowded. I don't have any previous October visits to compare it to though.

The thing I noticed however was, that crowds weren't consistent. For example on Wednesday, Oct 12 we spent some time in a very uncrowded AK and DHS - that was the day when according to the news here on wdwmagic, the MK added one hour to its operating hours. Neither was the MK crowded on the morning of Thursday, Oct 13, nor Epcot on the morning of Friday, Oct 14. And we even spent an evening eating around the world in Epcot on Monday, Oct 17. The longest line we waited in was about 10 people in France which then moved quickly when they opened a second cash register. Most other countries we just walked up to the booths and ordered what we wanted...

But then, Friday Oct 14 evening at the AK and Saturday, Oct 15 at the MK were really crowded and from Wednesday, Oct 19 on every park felt rather crowded to us...

There really appears to be a correlation between opening hours at a park and crowds - I am just not sure what is the cause and what the effect? Do people really want to stay out late, so they go to the park that is open longer in the evening? Or is Disney so good at figuring out where people seem to congregate on a given day and therefore adjusts the opening hours accordingly? Looking at how much evening EMH attract a lot of people, my guess would be that it really is the longer hours which cause more crowds. However, with the MK in October, I think every evening without a MNSSHP party will be crowded, because there are so few of those evenings!

And on the crowd level predictions: We did find the individual park crowd levels on touringplans useful - the parks where we did find lesser crowds were generally those which had lower crowd levels on touringplans as well. And as someone else had pointed out, they had predicted extremely heavy crowds for the October Saturdays at Epcot, just as it turned out to be...

 

[PhilharMagician]

Actually, this thread is practically a commercial for using the crowd calendars. For example, it sounds like touringplans accurately predicted a ridiculously large crowd for Epcot on Sat Oct 8, and very high crowds for Saturdays all month. A user of the crowd calendars could easily have chosen to visit parks on "1-5" days, of which there are plenty in October, as opposed to "8-10" days, which it appears, were accurately predicted.

Touring Plans has been off more than they have been correct the past week. I am not sure why, but I have always used them and never seen things this far off. A 1.1 for a park that has wait time over 100 minutes on multiple rides:brick:

 

[WDW1974]

Touringplans is not unlike a weather forecast. The closer you get the more data you have and the more accurate the predictions will be but, just like the weather, it can be way off at times. It by no means invalidates the site and their methods but you have to have a backup plan if it goes wonky.

I admit I never have looked at their site before. I use common sense and hundreds and hundreds of visits to guesstimate how busy things will be.

Most times, I'm pretty much right with what I expect and then experience. I certainly didn't expect the parks to be empty. And I figured EPCOT would be most crowded on Saturday (Disney hasn't done the unthinkable and extended park closing an hour, something not done since the 90s because they want to give guests more time in the parks at night).

But the volume of the crowds and across all four Disney parks as well as at UNI's HHN's (on a non-peak night) did really take me by surprise.

I am almost shocked the O-Sentinel hasn't had a Jason Garcia penned piece on crowds this month and the factors behind them. By comparison I'd almost call 2007 and 2008 'empty' ... so a lot of things are combining at the same time to result in these crowds.

At least the weather has improved for all those dealing with the crowds.

~GFC~

 

[WDW1974]

But then, Friday Oct 14 evening at the AK and Saturday, Oct 15 at the MK were really crowded and from Wednesday, Oct 19 on every park felt rather crowded to us...

That was my experience as well and I was there from the 14th-19th. The only park that didn't appear crowded to a point where I felt it was too busy (for my Spirited tastes) was TPFKaTD-MGMS last Monday. Only crazy waits were for TSMM (why anyone waits for this beyond 15-20 minutes is well beyond me). Star Tours was done multiple times as basically little more than a walk-on. RnRC had a 45-minute standby. Nothing else was even remotely busy.

There really appears to be a correlation between opening hours at a park and crowds - I am just not sure what is the cause and what the effect? Do people really want to stay out late, so they go to the park that is open longer in the evening? Or is Disney so good at figuring out where people seem to congregate on a given day and therefore adjusts the opening hours accordingly? Looking at how much evening EMH attract a lot of people, my guess would be that it really is the longer hours which cause more crowds. However, with the MK in October, I think every evening without a MNSSHP party will be crowded, because there are so few of those evenings!

Some people definitely are night Spirits and believe the parks are much more enjoyable without the sun beating on them and with the lights on. While Disney has EMHs, some to an absurd level (like MK being 7 a.m. to 4 a.m. some days Christmas week), when you look overall at what Disney used to offer to ALL guests, spread out over the year, they have far less hours of labor in 2011.

And hard-ticket parties definitely push people into MK on the 1-2 nights a week when the park is open late for all without paying a second admission fee.

But I can't recall when I saw them using backstage to exist guests on a day in October as I did last Saturday.

And on the crowd level predictions: We did find the individual park crowd levels on touringplans useful - the parks where we did find lesser crowds were generally those which had lower crowd levels on touringplans as well. And as someone else had pointed out, they had predicted extremely heavy crowds for the October Saturdays at Epcot, just as it turned out to be...

I would call this a 'no-brainer' due to EPCOT's unheard of 10 p.m. closings.

~GFC~

 

[WDWFigment]

Agreed.

I think they just exist (much like so many blogs/podcasts/websites) for people to join in on the Disney Social Media . I read these predictions and wonder what these folks are smoking and why people would even begin to believe them. They never seem to take into account any real world factors, which could be things like: free dining, local schools out, huge conventions in town, special events at certain parks affecting attendance at others etc.

~GFC~

TouringPlans' Crowd Calendar takes these, and other, 'real world' factors into accounts with its predictions.

In that email, if you have a chance, include some of your thoughts on the various Tokyo resort/hotels. Also, ever been in October or December?

 

[forevermickey]

September was really busy too!

 

[Bolna]

Some people definitely are night Spirits and believe the parks are much more enjoyable without the sun beating on them and with the lights on. While Disney has EMHs, some to an absurd level (like MK being 7 a.m. to 4 a.m. some days Christmas week), when you look overall at what Disney used to offer to ALL guests, spread out over the year, they have far less hours of labor in 2011.

I think I was trying to say the same thing: because parks tend to close so early generally outside of the peak seasons, once they are open longer for everybody, people are really atracted to those parks.

However, what really annoyed me was that most of these longer park hours were announced rather late. If you play Disney's game and get dining reservations months before the trip, it would be really nice to have reliable park hours to plan with!

But I can't recall when I saw them using backstage to exist guests on a day in October as I did last Saturday.

I wonder whether this was more a sign of operational lazyness than crowds? Main Street after Whishes is always chaos. However, in the past there seemed to be lots of crowd control cast members there creating passages. I did not really notice that this time, but then I wasn't trying to leave the park at that time, so did not look for it. I just thought that maybe by opening the backstage areas already when crowds aren't absolutely horrible, they need less crowd control cast members?

 

[Disaddict]

I wonder if it has finally just caught on? I mean, everyone always knew that this time of the year was one of the slowest so maybe it's like the news telling people that the best time to avoid rush hour traffic is around 3pm so then everyone and their mother goes out at 3pm and BAM, traffic at 3pm now. Maybe a lot of people decided "I'm going to skip the crowds this year and go when it's slower". Unfortunately, 10 million other people apparently thought the same thing. That along with the 40th anniversary and the always insane F&W festival are probably the culprits.

 

[71jason]

We love touringplans but they really missed the boat for October. For example, on August 25 they predicted a Crowd Level of "5" for October 22. It turned out to be a "9". touringplans did an excellent job of updating their predictions as soon as they got an indication of the increased crowd level (i.e. WDW changing their park hours).

I'm a fan of Touring Plans as well--while their reviews may be fanboi-ish, they seem to have some solid science behind their crowd formula. Which adds to the mystery:

What happened AFTER August 25 (apparently) that led to seemingly near-record crowds this month?

TP wasn't expecting this. TDO wasn't expecting this until a month and a half ago. That's not typical DDP bookings, not when free dining couldn't get the deluxes to 40% capacity in September. Something must have gone on behind the scenes that I don't think we've hit upon yet.

 

[jim1051]

We were there 10/15 to 10/22. Crowds were busier than expected but not bad. We avoided epcot over the weekend, It was less busy on Mon, and Thurs.

MK was crazy busy for the free parade/fireworks on Wednesday. With Halloween Party there were only 2 free evening parades/fireworks and lots of people trying to see them.

Other than Toy Story, the studios waits were short, as were those in AK.

 

[disneyflush]

Management slapping high fives with each other while reviewing October crowd counts and figuring out the least amount of money needed to keep capacity levels near 100%.

"Fastasmic broken?..hmmm....people still filling the seats?....we still printing money from these people?....leave it alone."

"Food quality complaints?...hmmm....restaurants still packed?..our food costs still down?...we still able to raise prices?....umm, get out of my office."

Its a business mentality and it is a business though I wish it were different.

 

[Disaddict]

Can someone please explain your definition of a "fanboy"? (or the stupid way of spelling it...fanboi) Please tell me it is not someone who simply loves Disney.

 

[njDizFan]

Can someone please explain your definition of a "fanboy"? (or the stupid way of spelling it...fanboi) Please tell me it is not someone who simply loves Disney.

Fanboy/fangirlFanboy is a term used to describe a male who is highly devoted and biased in opinion towards a single subject or hobby within a given field. Fanboy-ism is often prevalent in a field of products, brands or universe of characters where very few competitors (or enemies in fiction, such as comics) exist. An example is the market for CPUs for PCs, where AMD and Intel together hold a market share of 99.6% (as of Q1 2009).[4] In this market, users of home computers realistically only have a choice between two brands, and hence, a fight over which is better easily ensues. In this field, an "Intel fanboy" prefers CPUs made by Intel, and might aggressively defend their supposed superiority compared to the other brand(s), be skeptical or in denial about negative reviews of the product, and exert a high level of brand loyalty. The same brand war ensues when comparing video card brands Nvidia and ATI, which together dominate the video card market.

The term originated in comic book circles, to describe someone who was socially insecure and used comics as a shield from interaction, hence the disparaging connotations.[citation needed] Fanboys are often experts on minor details regarding their hobbies, such as continuity in fictional universes, and they take these details extremely seriously. The term has also been applied to criticize perceived fan elitism[citation needed]. The term itself is often used in a derogatory manner by less serious fans of the same material. Nevertheless, self-labeling usages of the term have been noted; in the songs of the fannish parody musician Luke Ski, many characters proudly consider themselves fanboys.

The term is usually used by and applied to people in their teens or 20s; an age group which is typically found pursuing geeky hobbies obsessively. Within this group, common objects of deference for fanboys are TV shows, movies, anime, cars, video game consoles, video games, music, operating systems, trains, home computers (in earlier decades), MMORPGs, ISPs, software and computer hardware companies.

The term fangirl can be used to describe a female member of a fandom community (counterpart to the masculine "fanboy"). Fangirls may be more devoted to emotional and romantic aspects of their fandom, especially (relation-)shipping. However, it is commonly used in a derogatory sense to describe a girl's obsession with something, most commonly a male teen idol or an aspect of Japanese pop culture. Fangirl behavior can vary in intensity. On one end of the scale are those that, while harboring a crush on a particular actor or character, are perfectly capable of understanding that the fulfilment of the crush is never going to happen. On the other end are the girls who are said to be obsessive in their claims on a fictional character, even fighting with other fangirls over who 'owns' the character in question. Fangirl behavior can fall anywhere in this spectrum, but the closer someone is believed to be towards the obsessive end, the more derogatory the use of the term 'fangirl' to describe them is perceived to be.[citation needed] Fangirls of all persuasions are believed to be the largest contributors to fanfiction websites, sometimes disregarding the canon storyline of their fandom or altering it to fit either their own favored romantic pairings; or themselves into the continuity (termed self-insertions or Mary Sues).[citation needed] A popular culture gag is that celebrities would use their fans as an army to take over the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_(person)#Fanboy.2Ffangirl

 

[Disaddict]

Wow. That was a pretty good copy from wiki. But I actually asked...

...please explain your definition of a "fanboy"?

The reason I asked this is because there are some here that seem to throw this term at another person flippantly whenever the other person doesn't agree with their view. That kinda of reeks of the definition you quoted though. So it would seem that most of the time when someone calls another person here a fanboy, they are actually being one themselves.

 

[Master Yoda]

Can someone please explain your definition of a "fanboy"? (or the stupid way of spelling it...fanboi) Please tell me it is not someone who simply loves Disney.

The simplest definition I have is where a person begins to ignore facts and logic about a subject they are passionate about.

A good example would be a PC fanboy that thinks Macs are complete pieces of crap that have no use whatsoever. This opinion ignores the fact that Macs solid computers with a good, easy to use, stable OS that have become the computer standard in certain fields.

 

[WDW1974]

However, what really annoyed me was that most of these longer park hours were announced rather late. If you play Disney's game and get dining reservations months before the trip, it would be really nice to have reliable park hours to plan with!

While that may be nice, that's not Disney's concern. They want to maximize profits and they do so by expanding hours only at last minute. Much better than having the parks staffed and the crowds low when they could have shut down 90 minutes ago. No, it isn't how Disney used to do things (where's the usual 'doubter' to tell me that my facts are wrong?). Back when they'd mail APers schedules for the following 4-6 months and they'd ALWAYS be accurate. Never a need to add hours later.

I wonder whether this was more a sign of operational lazyness than crowds? Main Street after Whishes is always chaos. However, in the past there seemed to be lots of crowd control cast members there creating passages. I did not really notice that this time, but then I wasn't trying to leave the park at that time, so did not look for it. I just thought that maybe by opening the backstage areas already when crowds aren't absolutely horrible, they need less crowd control cast members?

I have to believe operational costs or laziness plays a role. They don't have nearly enough CMs working crowd control vs DL (let's not talk about TDL where they probably have 10 times the amount of crowd control for any parade/pyro performance). It's just easier for Phil and Co to throw the whole idea of show out the window and make those crowds disappear by walking them past his new 2012 Escalade

~GFC~

 

[RSoxNo1]

I have to believe operational costs or laziness plays a role. They don't have nearly enough CMs working crowd control vs DL (let's not talk about TDL where they probably have 10 times the amount of crowd control for any parade/pyro performance). It's just easier for Phil and Co to throw the whole idea of show out the window and make those crowds disappear by walking them past his new 2012 Escalade

~GFC~

Part of the problem with the late schedule changes is the pattern that people are booking vacations. People are booking their vacations much closer to their departure date now and it's complicating the scheduling projections.

Sites like touringplans.com have to deal with these types of things as well, but it's probably more a function of a big component of their projections being Disney's projected hours.

It was explained to me as follows. Those people that were booking their vacations 6 months in advance are now booking that same vacation 6 weeks in advance.

 

[WDW1974]

The simplest definition I have is where a person begins to ignore facts and logic about a subject they are passionate about.

A good example would be a PC fanboy that thinks Macs are complete pieces of crap that have no use whatsoever. This opinion ignores the fact that Macs solid computers with a good, easy to use, stable OS that have become the computer standard in certain fields.

I would disagree. I consider myself a Disney Fanboi (btw, the spelling first came to me by Imagineers in Glendale who used it in a bit of disparaging way in the 90s when fans started calling some of their crappy projects, well ... crap ... part of the spelling no doubt came from the prevalence of gay males working there who always used BOI NOT BOY). I certainly don't believe it is disparaging or I wouldn't call myself one. Not a self-hater here. Just a Disney hater!


But the whole ignoring facts deal, that's maybe what some fanbois do, but certainly not all ... and, hopefully, not most. It's no different than fans of anything else from Apple products (that cult can be like Disney at times) to NBA fans (hey, where's all the games?:ROFLOL::drevil to reality TV shows to football fantasy leagues to Star Wars etc etc.

I'm a fan for Disney's parks. I am extremely passionate about the topic. But I always use facts and logic to describe why I think things are good, bad or in between.

Just because some fans don't, doesn't mean they all should be painted with the same brush. And contrary to some public opinion, simply stating someone is a fanboi isn't a disparaging comment or a slight ... now, perhaps mindless Pixie Dust smoking, Duffy clutching, Turkey-leg chomping fanboi would be a putdown!

~GFC~

 

[WDW1974]

Part of the problem with the late schedule changes is the pattern that people are booking vacations. People are booking their vacations much closer to their departure date now and it's complicating the scheduling projections.

Sites like touringplans.com have to deal with these types of things as well, but it's probably more a function of a big component of their projections being Disney's projected hours.

It was explained to me as follows. Those people that were booking their vacations 6 months in advance are now booking that same vacation 6 weeks in advance.

I had a great response to this and it just disappeared and I don't want to type it out.

So, basically I agree ... and what I don't agree on has to do with Disney operating 'lean and mean' on labor and absolutely not wanting to overstaff on all those $8-9 an hour CMs because they'd go out of business if they did that.


Sorry, original post was better.

~GFC~